A Barrington Middle School teacher, to help her seventh-grade students understand a period of American history after the Civil War, planned an evening performance of a “wax museum,” in which students...

Donita Naylor Journal Staff Writer donita22

A Barrington Middle School teacher, to help her seventh-grade students understand a period of American history after the Civil War, planned an evening performance of a “wax museum,” in which students stood in for characters from history, and vignettes, one of which depicted townspeople and Ku Klux Klan members brandishing clubs and torches.

She sent a memo to parents about the sheets and pillowcases needed for the students playing KKK members, and one parent strongly objected.

“The very thought of seeing children, in a play, dressed as members of the KKK makes me feel physically ill,” wrote Janice Black in a forum of fellow parents of students in the class cluster. “I already get ‘the message’ that I think the play will communicate. I don’t want to engrave in my mind the visual of children in KKK costumes on a stage in a public school. And I don’t want my daughter to have that visual in her mind, either.”

School Supt. Michael Messore said the teacher, Mary Roberts, who had written the series of vignettes for the Oct. 28 performance, rewrote the vignette, and the performance went on as scheduled.

The teacher decided “it would be better not to detract from educational student work by having something controversial. It would be better to rescript one of the vignettes,” Messore said.

“She is really an outstanding teacher,” he said of Roberts. “She combines so many methods. There’s not a lot of sitting in the classroom at a table,” he said.

Black, who noted that 17 other parents participated in the email discussion, concluded that “all in all, this forum has been quite educational.”